


First Days Suck!

by MsGordo_Writings



Series: First Meetings [4]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:53:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22517308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsGordo_Writings/pseuds/MsGordo_Writings
Summary: Another part to the series of ficlets that began with a challenge to describe Dawn and Connor’s first meeting. This follows on from ‘And Endings…?’
Series: First Meetings [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1620130
Kudos: 3





	First Days Suck!

**Author's Note:**

> These are the writings of [ MsGordo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kipplemine/profile), posted here with the author's express permission in order to preserve them from Yahoo Groups. If I have missed any tags or warnings, please feel free to let me know.

**Title: First Days** **_Suck!_ ** **(1/1)**

**Author: Karen**

**Pairing: D/C**

**Spoilers: BtVS season 7, AtS season 4.**

**Disclaimer: Not mine.**

**Synopsis: Another part to the series of ficlets that began with a challenge to describe Dawn and Connor’s first meeting. This follows on from ‘And Endings…?’**

**A/N: Um…I’m fudging my timelines slightly I think. For the purposes of this ‘series’ this is now set BtVS season 7 and Angel season 4, but Cordelia is Cordelia and never went away and Spike isn’t mad. ::shrugs:: So sue me**

  
  


Connor closed the door to his room and listened as his father walked slowly away down the corridor. He waited until he was sure that Angel had reached the hotel lobby and then, with every bit of strength he possessed, threw his book bag at the opposite wall. He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them only to curse at the three foot by three-foot dent in the newly painted plaster. He pushed away from the door and stomped over to his bed to flop down and stare morosely at the ceiling.

_ Well, as first days go, it could have gone better. _

He tucked his hands behind his head and scowled deeply.

_ It’s not like I  _ **_knew_ ** _ that woman was the security officer. _

He sighed and rolled over onto his stomach and rested his chin on his hands.

_ And that whole thing with the football team was blown  _ **_totally_ ** _ out of proportion. _

He ignored the growling in his stomach that announced his body was growing seriously concerned about the lack of food it had received that day. He just couldn’t face going downstairs and seeing them all. Seeing the look of disappointment on his Dad’s face and the bright grin on Cordelia’s as she tried to cover the hurt and confusion that the boy she had nurtured these last months had turned out to be…What was it now? Oh yes, that’s it. A big freak.

He flung himself restlessly over onto his back again and crossed his arms over his eyes as though trying to blot out the memories of the day and then gave a small groan as the images pounded through his head relentlessly anyway. He had to do something or he’d burst. He sat up and glared at the floor for a moment and then reached for the phone Gunn had installed with a wink and a grin only the night before.

_ Gotta have a place where you can talk to the honeys, right man?  _

Connor snorted.

_ Yeah, like that’s ever going to happen now. _

He picked up the receiver and listened for the dial tone and then, as Cordelia had taught him, carefully punched out the numbers he’d committed to memory.

***************************

  
  


Dawn snagged the phone off the hook as she simultaneously tried to ram her foot into her pants leg and crashed to the floor in an ungainly heap, “Summers resi…CRAP!”

Connor jumped at the other end of the line and took his own receiver hurriedly away from his ear. His eyebrows shot up at the inventive, and slightly disturbing, curses that floated down the line and then he cautiously said, “Dawn?”

Dawn froze at the sound of the unfamiliar male voice and then pushed her long, brown hair away from her face and replied equally cautiously, “Yes?” 

“It’s me.”

She frowned and thought furiously for a few seconds.  _ Ok, you got me. My mind is a void. I am Void girl, hear me curse.  _ “Uh-huh?”

Connor coloured as he realised she had no idea who she was talking too, “Connor. You know, Angel’s…I live with Angel.”

The light went on in Dawn’s head, “Connor!” She struggled into a sitting position and tried to untangle her legs, “How are you?” She frowned suspiciously, “What’s up? What did you kill?”

“Nothing!” Connor scowled at the wall and resisted the urge to add that it wasn’t for the lack of trying. “I just…I thought I’d see how you were.”

Dawn grinned in amusement and wasn’t fooled for a minute, “Bad day, huh?”

“No.” Connor’s grip tightened on the handset until the plastic creaked warningly and he felt the unfamiliar sting of tears in his throat, “I just…We haven’t talked…I wondered how you were. I should go. I’m sorry to have bothered you.” 

“Connor!” Dawn gripped her own phone and yelled as loudly as she could into it, “Don’t hang up, I’m just teasing you. Connor?”

Connor paused an inch away from the phone cradle and then slowly lifted the receiver back to his ear, “I’m here.”

Dawn blew out a relieved breath, “Good. Sorry, I was just kidding with you.” She finally managed to get her pants sorted out and lifted her butt off the floor to fumble them one handed over her hips, “So how are you? How’s school?” The silence at the other end of the phone told her all she needed to know, “That good, huh?” A sympathetic grin crossed her face, “Tell you what, I’ll tell you mine and then you can tell me yours and we’ll see which first day sucked more, ‘k?”

Connor looked doubtfully at the phone in his hand, she sounded way too cheerful for someone whose day sucked. He was going to win this hands down. Dawn took his silence for assent. “So, I get to the new high school and Buffy’s being way freaky, I mean more than usual, and then she won’t go home. So she stays and bursts in on my first class to yell about me being in danger and smoking and stuff and then a kid next to me asks for a pencil and I give it to him and then he turn’s into this uber skanky dead guy and I scream and fall off my chair…” There was the sound of a huge breath being taken from Dawn’s end of the phone then she lunged on, “So I pretended I saw a bee and got excused and went to the girl’s bathroom and there was this girl in there crying, her name’s Kit, she’d really nice, and she’s seen all these dead people too and we fall through this hole in the floor and more dead people try to kill us…” There was the sound of another huge lungful of air being sucked in, “But I called Buffy on my new cell phone, which is  _ way  _ cool, and she came and killed them and we got out and still had to go back to classes.” Dawn wheezed for breath, “So what did you do today?”

Connor blinked.  _ Ok, maybe it won’t be such an easy win after all.  _ “I beat up the football team because I thought they were demons and a member of security tried to stop me and I hung her by her boots from the stands.”

Dawn giggled, “No way!” She nodded sagely even though Connor couldn’t see her, “The jocks are  _ way  _ evil though. They probably deserved it.”

Connor blinked again, “But I beat them up!”

Dawn eyed her nail polish critically and reached for the bottle to touch it up, “Uh-huh, I heard ya. So how are classes?”

“ _ Classes _ ? Dawn, everyone thinks I’m a big freak!” The phone creaked warningly under the pressure again.

“And you are.” Dawn nodded and then scowled as she ran over the edge of her nail and splotched her finger, “Damn it.”

“Thanks.” Connor kicked his bedside table irritably, “You’re not helping.”

Dawn sighed and fanned her fingers through the air, “Connor, we’ve been through this. We’re  _ both  _ big freaks. Cut us in half and the word freak would be running straight down the middle. This isn’t news.” She shifted as her stomach rumbled and remembered the Twinkies that Buffy thought she’d hidden at the back of the cupboard, “Go grab yourself a soda, get some junk food inside you, go out and save the world and start again tomorrow. But try not to hit anyone at school unless you really have to.”

Connor pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it for a moment before bringing it back and saying incredulously, “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?”

“Well, yeah, what did you expect, a memory spell for the whole damn school?” Dawn grinned, “Believe me, those things  _ never _ end well.”

“I thought you’d have more than ‘don’t hit anything else’!” Connor pouted and kicked the bedside table again, “Everyone hates me and the principal called my dad.”

“Really?” Dawn remembered something else from her day and sighed, “Mine offered Buffy a job. I’d rather be you.” She stood up and stretched, “And I bet there’s at least a couple of girls that saw you in action and now think you’re a major hottie.”

“Oh don’t be so…” Connor paused, “Really? Do you think so?”

“Oh yeah.” Dawn scratched at her neck and decided to see if the phone cord would stretch all the way downstairs to the kitchen, “You can always guarantee some bubble-head will find the bad boy thing  _ way _ attractive. You’ll be beating them off with a stick.” She remembered who she was talking to and added hastily, “Figuratively speaking.” She made it to the top of the stairs. So far, so good.

Connor frowned. Bubblehead? That didn’t sound good. He thought some more and then shrugged. Hey, as long as it was human and had a pulse, who cared how they looked? He found his spirits lifting slightly. “I’m a bad boy?”

Dawn ground to a halt inches from the bottom of the stairs and peered longingly into the kitchen where she could see Spike moving around and fixing dinner. So near, yet so far. “Definitely. Feel better now?”

“Kinda.” Connor caught sight of his reflection in his mirror and grinned at his bad boy self, “Thanks Dawn.”

“No problem, Freako.” Dawn sniffed the air.  _ Mmm, tacos _ , “Listen, I gotta go. I’ve gotta have dinner and then we’ve got patrol. I’ll call you at the weekend, ok?”

Connor flicked his hair experimentally to the side and then shook his head, “Ok. Have a good week. Bye.”

Dawn sniffed the air again, “Bye.” She tossed the phone over her shoulder and jumped off the last step, “Spike, I’m hungry, how much longer?”

In LA Connor replaced the phone and crossed to his closet. He opened the door and pulled out the leather jacket that he and Dawn had bought on their shopping trip for school. He pulled it on and moved back to the mirror to study his reflection. He flicked up the collar and ran his hand through his hair so it fell away from his face. “Bad boy?” He grinned, “I can live with that.”

  
  


**The End.**


End file.
